Required Reading/Self-Fisking

Martin Kettle’s Guardian column on the Bush/EU rapprochement has some solid reporting and analysis, making it today’s Required Reading. But it also contains this whopper of a paragraph:

Much of this is summed up in the current transitional fluidity over the politics of Iraq. The war was a reckless, provocative, dangerous, lawless piece of unilateral arrogance. But it has nevertheless brought forth a desirable outcome which would not have been achieved at all, or so quickly, by the means that the critics advocated, right though they were in most respects.

So – war critics were right, even though the means they desired would have led to bad ends. And the warmongers were wrong, even though their means have brought about a “desirable outcome.”

Some days, you just can’t win.

UPDATE: Mark Steyn’s angle is – no shock here – a bit different:

But, in the broader sense vis-